Campus incident ignites discussion with community, police

Karen Pearlman/San Diego Union-Tribune

Members of the community weigh in on speakers at a meeting at Helix Charter High School on Monday night. The meetiong was a response to a violent incident involving a 17-year-old student and a police officer on Jan. 19.

Members of the community weigh in on speakers at a meeting at Helix Charter High School on Monday night. The meetiong was a response to a violent incident involving a 17-year-old student and a police officer on Jan. 19. (Karen Pearlman/San Diego Union-Tribune)

More than 100 people -- community members and police officials -- met for nearly two hours Monday at Helix Charter High School to address issues of trust, diversity and justice.

The forum was called to handle unrest in the aftermath of a campus incident in which a school resource officer body-slammed a female student to the ground, an image captured on video.

La Mesa Police Chief Walt Vasquez and several of the department’s officers, members of the community, and Helix Executive Director Kevin Osborn, Helix administrators, teachers and students spoke about their fears and hope for restorative practices and better policies for both the school and public safety communities.

Cornelius Bowser, a local pastor who moderated the nearly 2-hour meeting, said he was looking to heal wounds opened since the campus incident on Jan. 19.

On that Friday, a school resource officer was called to the campus in response to a report of a 17-year-old girl who had been suspended who was refusing to leave school grounds. The officer twice asked the student to leave, but she refused.

He then handcuffed her and started escorting her away. Police said when she “became noncompliant… and made an attempt to free herself,” the officer forced her to the ground until she agreed to quit resisting. A video showed him body-slamming the female student and pinning her to the ground.

The officer has since been reassigned to a different division and will not be working in any other schools until an investigation into the incident concludes.

The incident was captured on video and since then, Helix students have staged several protests, including a walkout and a march from the campus on University Avenue two miles up the road to the police station.

“What happened two Fridays ago hurts,” said Muna Abulahi, a junior at Helix. “To be a witness to that, to have it happen to someone I’m friends with and love, hurts. That it was happening on my campus hurts. Helix was the safe place where we weren’t subject to any of that.”

The forum was a student-generated idea, borne from last Wednesday’s protest march, when about 15 students found the police station’s doors locked upon their arrival.

Vasquez, who met with campus officials and students last week where he apologized for the closed doors, offered a public apology to the crowd that was gathered at Helix on Monday.

“Hindsight being 20/20, I should have not have locked the doors and should have talked to them,” Vasquez said about the students who marched. “I apologized to them, to the students and community leaders, and thank you for accepting my apology.”

But some community members said that an apology wasn’t enough, that action needs to be taken sooner versus later.

Paul Reams, a student at the school in the 1990s and an English teacher at Helix for 13 years, told the audience he was “disturbed and horrified” at the violence he saw in the video.

“Students who don’t trust police, who believe that they may be victims of violence even while handcuffed, are less likely to report troubling or criminal behavior to the appropriate authorities,” Reams said. “The excessive force of one officer has eroded trust that I fear, without appropriate responses by the police department, will take years of intentional work to re-establish.”

Reams said, however, that he has since become encouraged about how students are using their voices in “powerful and creative ways” to encourage open conversations and civil discourse about campus safety.

Osborn said more community meetings to continue the dialogue are being planned and that he welcomed people to continue to speak up at Helix school board meetings as well.